Last August, Berlin Atonal presented OPENLESS, a new compact format of three days of performances, concerts, and premieres. Each night unfolded around curated themes: The Less Deceived, Transcriptions, and The Clearing. In this edition, OPENLESS decentralizes the primacy of gaze and reclaims listening as an active gesture: that of sonic witnessing.
As I step into the main hall of Kraftwerk, silence fills the air. I say it out loud—I didn’t expect this. The space is mute, thickening the waiting. At 8 pm, the lights turn off, plunging the space into complete darkness, like a massive concrete theater.
The opening performance of the first act leaves the audience staring at an empty stage, deprived of any visual support. The aim is to displace the ears in space, reorienting attention toward listening and sustaining it—an invitation to try. As sound diffuses, passages and paths unfold through sonic textures and field recordings. The piece is Białowieża, an acoustic documentation by field recordist Chris Watson and blind sound recordist Izabela Dluzyk. Deriving from the geopolitical implications of the Białowieża forest in Poland, a recent crossing point for migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia seeking entrance to the EU, the piece sonically immerses the listener in a stratified ecosystem. Non-human witnesses take the stage, bearing testimony to the brutality of border policies and policing.
The opening act makes the intent clear: Who is witnessing this stream of oppression? And how can these injustices be sonically envisioned?
Fig.1
Historical fragments and collective threads weave together in the following performance, conjuring up ghosts and activating asymmetrical translations, inviting reflection on the present. Forensis (Forensic Architecture), in collaboration with Bill Kouligas’ PAN, presented The Drum and The Bird, an immersive auditory experience examining the relationship between lost ecologies and colonial exploitation. Premiering at OPENLESS, this work explores Germany’s colonial past in Namibia, focusing on the genocide of the Nama and Ovaherero peoples and the historical significance of Shark Island, the 20th century’s first concentration camp.
Through intergenerational testimonies, The Drum and the Bird unfolds both human and non-human perspectives, examining the exploitation of land, natural resources, and forced labor. The lack of photographic evidence from Germany's occupation (1893-1908) is counterbalanced by oral testimonies from the descendants of survivors and victims. Their voices visualize the island's erased architecture and landscape, resonating as repositories of enduring loss, a sonic dispossession, as Forensis puts it. The wind’s soundscape dominates the piece, recalling its weaponization by German settlers as an instrument of exhaustion and torture. Becoming progressively unbearable, the wind’s noise disturbance transposes the heavy sonic impact from the island to the performance space.
Halfway through the performance, figures appear, standing on an uplifted ramp behind the empty stage, as messengers. They start to speak, but interference makes their words hard to distinguish, questioning the signal's relevance.
Imperial violence is sonically retraced on Kraftwerk’s concrete surfaces. The space holds the audience auditorily accountable for oppression, displacement, and dispossession. Sound withholds trauma, triggering memories. The tension between flux and interruption, disturbance and utterance, noise and signal, plays a significant role in this first act. Holding space for noise is holding space for historically erased voices and subjectivities—reclaiming space for rage and reparation. With Kenyan artist Lord Spikeheart closing the evening, this takes on a cataclysmic intensity.
Fig.2
Acoustic reminiscences confront the audience with their political role and the power of memory in shaping experiences, often in contradiction. Through the program, the audience confronts processes of forgetting and recurrence on both individual and collective scales. The second evening, Transcriptions, expands on modes of remembrance and sonic inheritance, focusing on rhythmic traditions and their contemporary translations. The legacy of legendary Senegalese percussionist Doudou N'Diaye Rose and Sabar drumming culture serves as the starting point, generating dialogic moments with contemporary electronic sonorities.
Rose, a key figure in Sabar drumming—a traditional Senegalese percussion form closely tied to Wolof culture—developed an extensive archive of over 500 rhythmic patterns. The Family N'Diaye Rose opens and closes the day, interacting with other artists and the audience. The re-enactment of the Tannabier, a street-based traditional celebration, reintroduces a collective, social element to the listening experience. Here, Nkisi's Mythe Ou Réalité stages a dialogue with Rose through rhythmic patterns, improvisation, and ritualistic approaches.
Despite the dialogue between the first and second days, each night feels like a circular sonic ecosystem. Each ending is an interruption leading to another act. This curatorial choice blurs the boundaries between enclosure and openings. The final evening, The Clearing, stands out as more autonomous, with time stretching into emotional, inward landscapes. Here, more than ever, space becomes a listening chamber, shaped uniquely by sound and light.
Fig.3
Over three nights, space stretches and shrinks, materializing a forest in Watson and Dluzyk’s field recordings, a domestic haven in Saint Abdullah, Eomac, and Rebecca Salvadori’s footage, and an island in Forensis/Forensic Architecture and Bill Kouligas’ investigation. The rhythmic interludes of The Family N'Diaye Rose break the linearity, inviting a more interactive use of space, and introducing multi-tempo and multi-activational stages. While the format enhances focus on the experience of listening, it simultaneously reinforces frontal, stage-audience linearity. In contrast, these moments propose a deeper understanding of how sound organizes, reshapes, dismantles, and assembles witnesses, histories, and shared spaces.
Atonal's OPENLESS loads its most political intentions on its first day, merging site-specific performance, sound design, and journalistic inquiry. Decentralizing the ear from familiar scores while bridging human and non-human sonorities, OPENLESS discloses the affective, relational, and political quality of sound, allowing for a plurality of narratives where individual perspectives reinforce collective experiences. Listening is reclaimed as an active gesture of presence, expanding perceptual possibilities of understanding sonic encounters.
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Cover:
Lord Spikeheart, Ph. Helena Majewska
Fig.1 Forensis (Forensic Architecture) in collaboration with Bill Kouligas, Ph. Helena Majewska
Fig.2 The Family N’Diaye Rose, Ph. Helena Majewska
Fig.3 Nkisi, Ph. Helge Mundt
